Krafton, South Korea’s gaming large identified for titles together with PUBG: Battlegrounds and Battlegrounds Cell India (BGMI), has acquired a controlling stake in 12-year-old Indian gaming studio Nautilus Cell for $14 million in an all-cash deal.
On Friday, the South Korean gaming firm confirmed to TechCrunch that it has acquired a “north of 75% stake” in Nautilus, the gaming studio widespread for its cricket enthusiast-focused Actual Cricket franchise.
The Pune-based studio will proceed to function independently after the deal, which is anticipated to shut by the top of the month, with all its 45 workers remaining on Nautilus’s payroll, Krafton instructed TechCrunch.
Based in 2013, Nautilus has garnered thousands and thousands of downloads for its Actual Cricket franchise, which presently has 5 titles, together with Actual Cricket 24 and Actual Cricket Premier League.
Krafton goals to strengthen Nautilus’s “core competence” in cellular cricket video games — the place demand is excessive in cricket-loving India — by refining its present titles within the quick time period and exploring new genres in the long run, Sean Hyunil Sohn, CEO at Krafton India, mentioned in an interview.
“Our growth functionality in Nautilus will assist Krafton double down on its India gaming technique, and collectively, we are able to in all probability construct extra video games, extra genres, each for the Indian market and world market going ahead,” Nautilus CEO Anuj Mankar instructed TechCrunch.
The corporate plans to broaden Nautilus’ presence to different geographies over time.
India’s cellular gaming market is rising steadily, pushed by a big base of younger smartphone customers. Cell video games dominate the nation’s total gaming trade by spending, accounting for 77.9% of complete income, per market intelligence agency Niko Companions. The agency additionally estimates that the nation’s cellular gaming income will develop from $640 million in 2023 to $1.1 billion by 2028.
Krafton, which noticed 119.3% year-over-year development in its internet revenue final 12 months to roughly $889 million (KRW 1.3 trillion), sees India as a promising and key market to proceed its success. Nevertheless, many of the development from India has to this point come from its flagship title for the native viewers, Battlegrounds Cell India (BGMI), which hit its highest-ever gross sales final 12 months and surpassed 200 million downloads.
The corporate has different titles, together with Bullet Echo India, Highway To Valor, and CookieRun. Nevertheless, they haven’t but helped repeat the success story of the battle royale sport, a localized model of PUBG.
The deal may assist Krafton transfer past BGMI and discover new avenues of success, together with cricket and different sports activities video games, to draw new avid gamers.
In 2020, Indian digital leisure and know-how firm JetSynthesys acquired a 100% stake in Nautilus Cell. That was adopted by Krafton’s strategic funding of $5.4 million in 2022.
Sohn instructed TechCrunch that whereas Nautilus’ potential was the explanation for the preliminary funding, Krafton discovered its function as a minority stakeholder limiting by way of supporting the studio’s content material growth. Gaining a controlling stake, he mentioned, would permit for deeper collaboration and better involvement in core growth efforts with Nautilus.
“We strongly imagine that cricket video games have loads of potential. And we need to work with Nautilus to make one of the best effort potential to essentially understand the potential of this market, not simply in India, however in different cricket-playing nations and different nations, which have gotten extra energetic in cricket,” mentioned Nihansh Bhat, company lead growth at Krafton India, instructed TechCrunch.
JetSynthesys will stay a “vital minority” investor in Nautilus Cell and can proceed to work with the studio on areas, together with eSports. The corporate has already labored with the studio to assist associate its Actual Cricket sport with cricket groups, together with these related to the Indian Premier League, the world’s most profitable cricket match in India.
“We’ll, over an extended time frame, need to take a look at, in fact, elevated income, elevated person base, improved retention, all the same old issues, and hopefully new offers as effectively,” Bhat mentioned on the query of how Krafton would measure the deal’s success put up its completion.
Till now, Krafton has invested over $200 million in India, excluding the Nautilus Cell.
Krafton’s 20% investments in India have been in gaming and gaming-adjacent corporations, although the corporate additionally invested in Indian startups, together with the funds platform Cashfree, audio platform Kuku FM, and influencer advertising platform One Impression. It additionally backed funds, together with gaming-focused Lumikai and IMM Funding’s first India fund.
“We’re trying on the alternative for acquisitions, average investments, and even enterprise collaboration with notable gamers within the nation,” Sohn mentioned.
Nautilus will be part of the 14 different sport studios Krafton operates in markets around the globe.
